First, we follow Damien Walter on the trail of Weird London, a parallel city that has been built on the banks of another Thames by writers of fantasy fiction. He explores why the capital has made such fertile ground for writers who look beyond the real, along with Tom Pollock, M John Harrison and the owner of the Atlantis Bookshop, Geraldine Beskin.

You can listen to the podcast here. Damian Walter interviews Tom at 2:43 minutes in.

Interestingly, Matt started off providing the characters and the atmospherics. Matt is also a published poet and it really shows in his prose. And I contributed a lot of the… hold on to your seats, folks … the PLOT!

We did the story in two major drafts, with one crit from Joel Lane, who is the Brum Writer’s Group with Matt.

So this collaboration thing was lots of fun, and I learned a lot from it. Two heads can be better than one, to start with.

Eibonvale Press describe the premise for Rustblind and Silverlight so,

Trains occupy a special place in the human psyche. The twin threads of the rails forge ahead from place to place, the ultimate symbol of travel and connection and all the hopes, fantasies, fears, reasons, romance and excitement that come with that. The links between points, the bridges and tunnels, are always so much more profound than borders or walls. And yet you travel these links through a world that is isolated from normal life and unique to itself. The railways are so mundane and taken for granted, passing through the backs of your cities and towns, yet they are worlds that cannot be visited, cannot be known. Worlds that can only be glimpsed from blurred windows or from the far end of the platform. Hidden places. Private places. Places where the ordinary and the secret meet.

This was the mood in which Rustblind and Silverbright came into being – a book of railway stories that aimed to look far beyond what you might expect from classic horror or sci-fi.

David Gullen reviewed Shackleton’s Man Goes South by Tony White for Arc Magazine. The book is the first novel ever published by London’s Science Museum, and David says it’s a “a triumph of controlled anger”.

Part fiction, part historical narrative, part science journalism, Shackleton’s Man Goes South depicts an adventure as magnificent and dreadful as Scott’s or Shackleton’s. Commissioned by the Science Museum as part of a five-year programme of contemporary art on the subject of climate, this is a book about going forwards by going back. Characters in the future echo those from the past; as clues from fossils and ice cores tell us about a warmer past, and hint at the future.

I’ve started dipping my toe into audio narration with some of these and enjoying it very much. Hope to try a few more ambitious things in the near future.

If you’re enjoying David’s style, you’ll be happy to hear his first collection of short stories, Open Water will be published by TheEXAGGERATEDpress later this year. The launch is currently scheduled for World Fantasy at Brighton (31st October – 3rd November).

David says:

I’m really pleased about this. Short stories get published in a magazine and then tend to diappear. It will be great to have some back in print – and some new ones too.

Some readers might have met Helen in Arthur Machen’s classic novella The Great God Pan. Now she gets to tell her side of the story.

Contrary to rumours of her death, Helen Vaughan is alive and well and living in Shoreditch. Having learned a few things about painting from an ex-boyfriend, she’s stirring up the art world with a series of erotically-charged landscapes depicting the strange events of her youth.
Brought up by a man who regarded her as loathsome, shuffled between boarding schools and foster homes, young Helen only found pleasure in visits from a secret companion. She made one other close friend, a girl called Rachel who disappeared in full daylight. After that, Helen was left with her companion.
He stayed with her on travels from rural Wales to the select salons and danker corners of London, to expatriate life in Buenos Aires and beyond. But he’s kept away for several years.
As she remembers her friend, Helen lays on each stroke of paint as if it can bring Rachel back or take her to where Rachel went. She paints to summon her companion once again, and show everyone what really lurks beyond the vanishing point.

Novik and Josie have a lot of catching up to do. After two years in jail she has waited for his release and never ever wants him to go back in again. In the America of the near-future, being a decent person can cost you dearly.

A stress-filled encounter with some “Old-fashioned Boys” at a chain eatery turns their best of intentions upside-down: they’re now on the run and in possession of a super-hot sentient muscle car and 190 million dollars, covered with a potent psychoactive powder.

Shopocalyptic road trip, anyone?

David Gullen has written a witty and observant novel that effortlessly waves a tale of geo-political destabilisation, shopping, performance art police, well-meaning automobiles, cool killer robots, eco-terrorists, and the importance of storage-space.

Fox McGeever’s story, The Inheritance Room won first prize in the Spinetinglers March short story competition. This is the third story Fox has sold that is connected to his serial fantasy fiction Parawerthan blog. You can read the winning story here.

And in the very same month, Deborah Walker won third prize with The Love Of Money, written under her horror pseudonym Kelda Crich, available to read here.

Hidden under the surface of everyday London is a city of monsters and miracles, where wild train spirits stampede over the tracks and glass-skinned dancers with glowing veins light the streets.

When a devastating betrayal drives her from her home, graffiti artist Beth Bradley stumbles into the secret city, where she finds Filius Viae, London’s ragged crown prince, just when he needs someone most. An ancient enemy has returned to the darkness under St Paul’s Cathedral, bent on reigniting a centuries-old war, and Beth and Fil find themselves in a desperate race through a bizarre urban wonderland, searching for a way to save the city they both love.

The City’s Son is the first book of The Skyscraper Throne: a story about family,friends and monsters, and how you can’t always tell which is which.